Our ABC – Documentaries or propaganda?

John Roskam, from Liberal Party propaganda outfit, The Institute of Public Affairs, in yet another Age op-ed, accuses the ABC of not doing its job, and demands Government intervention to ensure the ABC reflects a diversity of opinion.

If every television current affairs program had a position that was hostile to Australia’s continued involvement in the Iraq war, would we expect taxpayers to fund programs that supported the Iraq war?

Such suggestions are preposterous. But the ABC operates on exactly this basis. The claim is that because the commercial media are “conservative” and “right-wing”, the national broadcaster should be “radical” and “left-wing”.

Roskam’s premise that the ABC screens documentaries of a ‘radical’ or ‘left-wing’ nature, is not evidence of bias. It simply reflects the reality that documentary makers tend to offer a reasonably objective analysis of the issue at hand, and that will usually be more sympathetic to a left-wing view than a right-wing view. I don’t think the documentary showing why the war in Iraq is a good thing has been made yet, because by any reasonable, factual, broad-ranging analysis will show it to be the debacle that it is. Perhaps Roskam is advocating that the ABC screen regular Government propoganda films instead?

It is simply a fact of life that many of the causes favoured by the right simply do not stand up to rigorous intellectual analysis that will be anything but critical.